I can't stop groovin, my pelvis won't let me

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a blog (thank you Indian dial up internet) and I am now in Goa. Here’s a brief run down of what happened over the past couple of days.

Jaipur

It was really fun spending Christmas in a Hindu country that doesn’t actually celebrate Christmas. Our only taste of Christmas cheer was the “carols” that were playing in our hotel lobby. By “carols” I really mean that someone had hooked up their old Nokia 6610i to the sound system and played the three preloaded Christmas polyphonic ringtones on repeat ALL DAY.

We found Clare (well she found us asleep in our hotel room), exchanged knick knack presents with each other and headed to my palace (The Amber Fort and Palace) to start our Christmas Day. We walked around for a bit before Clare decided that we could better soak up the atmosphere on the roof with a ciggie. 

My palace

Half way down our decent (the palace is built on a MASSIVE mountain) I realized we had misplaced Clare, until I saw her a few seconds later casually strolling down the steps with a large gang of small children. Apparently her bright pink hair had made her the Pied Pipper of Jaipur and her new friends were very keen to follow us and giggle. Giggle a lot.

The rest of the day was spent palace bar hopping (there are a lot of beautiful heritage palaces in Jaipur) and eating amazing traditional Indian dishes like butter chicken. One of the palaces we hit up was the Rambagh Palace, which was gated hotel community complete with many many shops and a man whose only job was to walk around the courtyard chasing away pigeons.

Obviously the most appropriate thing to do at an establishment like Rambagh Palace is to hunt and chase their peacocks, which we did. After being politely directed to the bar and taking in a few cocktails, we left Rambagh Palace in the classiest way possible (walking) and hailed an auto rickshaw (like the Agra one but with a motor and without of a 116 yr old driver) to take us back to our hotel. The streets of Jaipur are a million times worse than Delhi as indicating is for uncool people and two lanes can magically become 4 (sometimes even 5 or 6) on any road at any time.

We ended our Christmas day at a classy establishment called “waves” where Pitbull was on repeat and the Indian barmen dressed in Santa suits circa 1983.

Delhi

The car trip from Jaipur to Delhi was long and consisted of me either
a) Spewing. A lot. Everywhere. or

b) Blowing kisses at Indian men who stared at us (Don’t do this if you are in a stationary or very slow moving car. Trust me).

We arrived back at chalet Amax late in the evening and went to bed early to prepare for the awesome flight of fun to Goa (even more fun because it was on an Indian internal airline which clearly lacked basic safety features).

Goa

The place is amazing and I will write a few blogs dedicated to our experience here with fun things like pictures.

The days have been spent drinking from coconuts and the nights at bars indulging with a $2.50 cocktail (maybe many $2.50 cocktails).

Jess isn’t the party animal, so we told her we were all going to a “cultural festive dinner” which was actually a silent trance disco in the middle of the Goan jungle. She appreciated it.

Hope everyone has a great New Years. I'll have pics very soon!